The Great Outdoors

We are spending a lot more time outside than usual with our big landscaping project, and I'm really enjoying it. It's nice to enjoy the sunshine and see all of the plants and trees blooming again. God really created a beautiful world!

This past weekend was dedicating to outlining our flower beds, trees, and mailbox with rock. I just have to say....what a big improvement!!! I was pretty nervous about it before we bought the rock at Reseda. I had a hard time picturing how it would look with our red brick house. Plus, the rock was going to cost over $200! So, if it didn't turn out very good, there goes all that money down the drain! Luckily, although we are pretty frugal in most areas, our house projects usually spare no expense as far as Travis is concerned. So, he wasn't worried about it at all. That is, until the guy at Reseda loaded the pallet of rock into the back of the truck. I think Travis was about to panic thinking that Jeff's truck was going to fall apart under the weight of the pallet. Luckily, the truck did just fine, and we made it home with all the rock and the truck in one piece. Whew! :) Thanks again, Jeff and Melissa, for letting us borrow your truck! Hopefully we can get it back to you after this coming weekend! :)

We bought the rock early Friday afternoon and spent the rest of the daylight hours starting our project. Since we obviously couldn't lift the pallet out of the truck ourselves (where was that forklift when we needed it?), we had to take the rocks out of the pallet by hand and load them into a wheelbarrow. It wasn't too hard. Travis commented that this part of the project was the most fun yet "because it was a lot like Tetris". Trying to fit the rocks together was pretty fun and a nice break from digging holes! We got the left flower bed and small semi-circle bed finished on Friday, and we were so happy with the results!

Yay!

Double yay!

What a difference those rocks make!

Saturday, we woke up early and got started a little after 7:30 AM. We got the right flower bed done by about 12:30 PM. Before laying the rock down on that side, we put in a metal liner to keep the grass/weeds from growing into the flower bed. We decided not to worry with that on the left flower bed since it is lined by the sidewalk. Installing the metal liner was pretty easy. You just lay it out and hammer it down with stakes. We put the rock in front of the liner so you can't even see it from the road. It looks great!

Putting in the metal liner

Unloading the rocks

The right side is finished

Yay!

After a break for lunch, we went back outside to start outlining around the trees. We have two maple trees and one magnolia tree in our front yard. Previously, they were outlined with really ugly red brick that didn't even match the color of the brick in our house. It really looked bad. The new rocks are another big improvement! We had to stop several times during the afternoon because quick rain showers would pop up. So, we'd go inside for a few minutes to wait it out. But, finally we got finished!

It all matches!

Our last project of the day was outlining the mailbox with the remaining rock. We were almost out of the rock by this point, but luckily we had enough to finish. Soon, there will hopefully be some pretty flowers planted here!

Yay!

By the end of those two days, I felt like I'd done about 1,000 squats at the gym. So much bending down and standing back up! But, it was worth it!

I have to confess that we're not quite finished with the rock part of the project. Before we lined the left flower bed with rock, we dug a shallow trench for the rocks to sit in. They are stacked two high, but you can really only see the top layer because of the sidewalk. However, on the right side, you can see both layers clearly. We are going to go back and add some dirt back under the rocks on the left side to make both layers visible. We think it will look better overall that way. We are planning to do that tonight, so hopefully it will be pretty quick and simple!

This weekend, we are planning to finish this landscaping project for good! We want to plant a few flowers in between the shrubs and then add a layer of mulch to all of the beds. And that should do it! Next week, hopefully I'll be able to post some good "before and after" pictures!! :)

Although landscaping has taken up a lot of our time lately, we are still somehow getting our normal weekly activities done too. You know, things like working, sleeping, eating, running, etc. Once we get this landscaping finished, I think we'll take a few weeks off from house projects. I have a feeling our schedules are about to get pretty busy anyway with a half-marathon, graduations, teaching Bible classes at church, birthdays, vacations, and Guntersville camp coming up anyway. May and June especially are always pretty hectic!

Speaking of running, I took a week off before running for the first time again last night. Apparently, the week off only served to make me MORE out of breath; it did nothing for my foot. It hurt as bad as ever if not worse. It's been pretty discouraging the past few weeks to be getting slower instead of faster, but oh well. At this point, I'll just be glad to finish the race and "retire" from long distance races. I think my body is better suited for 5Ks anyway! The race is a month from tomorrow, so I'll just have to tough it out until then...

I'll leave you with a few pictures of Gabby and me. In the middle of a rain shower on Saturday, I decided to try to snap our picture...

Doesn't Gabby look excited to be in the picture? :)

Oh my. I can't help laughing when I look at that! Luckily, Travis didn't mind snapping a much better pic for us. I know Gabby was relieved to get both of her eyes in this one!

I love her!!

I love Felix too...he just doesn't cooperate too much when he's held. A.K.A. bloody-battle-with-Travis-on our-anniversary. He'll never live that one down! At least it's somewhat funny now looking back on it :)

There's always something going on around here, that's for sure!!

Dirt Diggin'

I am still recovering from the weekend.

 Travis and I REALLY worked hard on Saturday and Sunday, and the muscles in my back and legs are telling me about it. I feel like most weekends we are pretty productive (although sometimes without a lot to show for it), but last weekend we took it to the extreme.

We spent literally all day on Saturday trying to get our flower beds ready for planting. We were outside before 8 AM shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow and dumping it in the backyard. Around 9 AM, we took a break and headed to Across the Pond for some soil conditioner to mix into the dirt in our flower beds. Since the dirt in our flower beds was mostly red clay, we felt like mixing soil conditioner in them would help shrubs and flowers grow better. They sell this stuff by the scoop, and it is a BIG scoop. So, we brought that home and kept working...digging out red clay to make room for the soil conditioner.

Around mid-day, Travis decided that we needed to totally reroute the drainage pipe that goes through the left flower bed. It was originally buried right in the middle of the bed....so it would be in the way of planting stuff eventually. If you are a loyal blog reader (which makes you probably one of 5!), you might remember that we patched that drainage pipe 2 weekends ago because several parts of it had holes. Well, that was a complete waste of time. We ended up replacing a really long section of the pipe AGAIN (after finding MORE holes) and moving it to the very front of the bed right along the sidewalk so it won't be in the way when we're ready to plant stuff. I may or may not have gotten very mad at some point in there that we wasted our time 2 weeks ago, but as usual, Travis wanted to "do the job right" and I gave in and admitted in the end that it was a good idea. BUT, we're both in agreement that we never want to touch that drainage pipe again, so if we have more problems with it, we're just calling in a professional! :)

Finally around 6 PM, after moving who knows how many wheelbarrows of dirt to the backyard and filling in the flower beds with soil conditioner, we were finally finished. (Although, it took Travis another hour to get everything cleaned up and put away). I was SO sore!! My arms and back aren't used to shoveling dirt, so they really got a workout!

Sadly, at the end of the day on Saturday, no one could even tell we'd done any work! I'm sure our neighbors are wondering how many times those crazy kids are going to dig in their flower beds with nothing to show for it! :) One of these days, we'll have stuff planted...and if it doesn't rain, maybe it will be this coming weekend!

As if Saturday wasn't enough to wear us out, Sunday afternoon we went out for a long run. We were actually supposed to run on Saturday, but as you can see, we ran out of time. So, between church services on Sunday, we went running. We were supposed to run 9.5 miles, but we both ended up getting lost and only running about 8.5 miles. Oh well. At one point, I looked down at my watch and I'd been running for 55 minutes, and it seemed like about 20 minutes, so I guess that's a good sign! About halfway through the run, my right foot started hurting on top, so I'm hoping it's nothing serious. It's still hurting a little bit today, so we'll see how it does on my 30 minute run this afternoon. Can't believe the half marathon is next month!

Friday was a difficult day with the bad weather and tornadoes coming through the area. We both had to work, so that made it worse because we weren't home, and we weren't together. Just about every patient in pre-op had their TVs on watching the weather, and I just had this terrible feeling in my stomach all morning. It brought back really bad memories from last year. At one point, someone told me that a tornado touched down about a mile or two from our house, and that was enough to send me nearly into a panic. Travis ended up leaving work early just to go home and check on everything. He wasn't able to concentrate on work anyway. I think I'll always view tornadoes differently after last year, but I'm hoping with time they won't just make me completely panic like on Friday. I felt like I couldn't even focus on what I needed to do at work because I was so worried. Luckily, we had no damage this time, and no one we know was hurt or had any damage at their house either. That's something to be thankful for!

Mom is going to be finishing radiation sooner than she originally thought. They are cutting back on the number of treatments because she is having SO much itching and soreness. Her last treatment is next Thursday, the 15th. Hang in there, Mom! You can do it! :)
 
It's crazy that March is here, and spring is pretty much here as well. Daylight Savings Time is Sunday, which means it will be staying light longer at night! Hooray for that! I'm looking forward to warmer weather, running in shorts and a T-shirt, pretty flowers blooming in our yard, Fripp Island (which will be here before too long!), and lots of sunshine. Springtime makes me smile!!!

Come back, spring break!

Even though I don't really miss college that much (at least the studying and tests part), one thing I do miss is having spring break. Once spring break gets here, it means that summer is right around the corner. The weather is warming up, and I just want to get outside and enjoy it! When we lived in Presidential, we used to really enjoy spring break just staying in Tuscaloosa. We almost had the whole campus to ourselves because everyone else was at the beach or at home! It was fun to walk around the Quad, throw the frisbee around, play tennis, and just get caught up on everything. Now that we're "grown ups", spring break is just another work week I guess. Oh well! I'm still loving the fact that it stays lighter later at night; I don't think that will ever get old. Just seeing the sun and not having to wear a jacket outside automatically makes me happy. 

Last weekend was a very productive one! We got the guest bathroom painted, and it was a lot easier than painting the master bathroom since it's smaller and there are less things to paint around. It looks much better gray than it did sky blue! With a nice shower curtain and some towels hanging on the wall, it will look complete! We've still got to hang the mirror back up and do some touch up spots, but other than that, it's pretty much finished. Completing the painting in the bathroom means that we've now painted every room in whole house, minus closets and the garage! Whew! It's definitely taken us a while, but I'm really happy with the way everything looks. 

Our painting station :)

Travis fired up his lawnmower and weedeater on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and he managed to make our yard look way better than it did on Friday. Those purple flowery weeds were taking over! Good news is they are gone now...at least for a few more days :) He had a big grin on his face while he was cutting the grass because he'd "been waiting to cut the grass at his own place for years." I guess it will get old after a while, but he definitely had fun with it last weekend!

Travis's new toy!

This weekend, we're going to work on painting the pantry and the closet in the master bedroom. The tedious part will be taking down the shelving and putting it back up; the painting shouldn't be too difficult hopefully. Once we get those two done, we'll be ready to move in I think! :)

Travis is playing laser tag tomorrow night with a bunch of the guys from church, so I think I'm going to move some more of my kitchen stuff over to the house and get my cabinets organized. I also need to measure all of the windows in our house for blinds and buy some paint for the closets. 

Yesterday, Mom and Jenn came up to see all of the progress we've made on our house. It was the first time for Jenn to see it at all. I think she's got a spot picked out on the La-Z-Boy to sleep in next time she comes :) We also went to this thrift store right down the road to look for furniture possibilities for the house. I didn't find anything, but Mom ended up getting a new lounge chair for the lake house. All it needs is a cushion, and it will be good to go!


Today I met Travis, Alisha, and Emily at Chuck Wagon for lunch. It's this little hole-in-the-wall BBQ place in Madison that reminded me a lot of City Cafe with a different menu. It was really good! And, tonight we're eating corned beef for supper with the Grant fam and Tyler. Should be a fun time!
 
Hope you remembered to wear your green today (or hurry and put some on if you didn't!).

:)

Best week of the semester :)

This really has been the best week of the semester so far. Travis and I have spent an entire week together, and we still have 2 more days before he has to go back to t-town! I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Last Friday, he drove up to Baugay's from Tuscaloosa, and due to several problems on the interstate (wrecks and sinkholes), it ended up taking him 3 1/2 hours instead of 2 1/2. So, we ended up missing supper at the Hesters' house unfortunately. Instead, we ended up cooking a frozen pizza and going to Publix for groceries. Fun, fun!

Saturday, we did some cleaning around the apartment before eating supper with Travis's family (minus Emily, who is in Europe!) and Tyler's family that night. We had never met Tyler's parents or his little sister before, so it was great to meet them and spend the evening together!

Sunday, we went to church and ate lunch with Travis's family. After lunch, we went to two CVS's looking for deodorant deals. I finally found the kind I was looking for at the CVS on Hughes, so I got 6 for about 40 cents each! Sunday night, Andrew and Gary came over and we ate pizza and hung out.

Monday and Tuesday, Travis and I spent a good bit of both days painting the basement at his mom's house. We had fun with her, Alisha, and Tyler, and I think I got a lot better at painting by the end of it all. The basement really looks good! Monday night, I ate the best pizza I've ever had..seriously. It was from Papa Murphy's, which I'd never heard of before, but we're definitely going to have to go there again soon. They make the pizza in front of you, and then you take it home and cook it in the oven. It was awesome! Wow, didn't realize I'd eaten so much pizza over the break! Oops :)

We also got a new tag for my car...I'm now officially a 47er :)

Wednesday, we spent most of the afternoon working on taxes (not fun!). We figured out that we should be getting almost $400 back, so yay for that! Guess that will be going towards the new car and/or future house funds like the rest of our money :)

Yesterday and today, we went our separate ways. Travis went on a canoe trip with Alan and Gary up at Shoals Creek, and he came back looking like a lobster. One day, I'll convince him that sunscreen is a good thing. One day. They had fun though and didn't freeze or starve, so that was a bonus.

I headed down to Smith Lake to hang out with my parents since they were going to be there for a couple of days. I can't believe it had been over a month since I'd seen them last! We started painting the screened porch today, and it looks a lot better already. Hopefully next time we go to the lake we can stay longer. The weather was absolutely perfect today!

Apparently, the 2 P's of spring break this year were pizza and painting :)

Got some bad news tonight...Granny was taken to the hospital this morning in Birmingham and is in ICU right now. Her heart stopped a few times while she was in the ER, and she's getting a pacemaker put in on Monday. That's about all I know right now. Mom and Dad were heading there tonight to see her...they left the lake house early when they found out late this afternoon. Hopefully the pacemaker will get her heart working right again and she'll be able to go home!

Tomorrow night, Matt and Maggie are coming over for supper, so we're excited about that. I love having people over!

Thanks for listening to my ramblings!

Hurry up, spring break!

I can't believe this will be my last spring break ever. This time next year, I'll be graduated and probably working somewhere in town. Travis might have to spend next spring break by himself! That means I want to take full advantage of this year's. We don't have any big plans, but we may go to the lake for a few days (if the weather is nice). Other than that, we'll probably just sleep late, throw the frisbee around, maybe go on a picnic, play tennis, and watch a few movies. I can't wait!!

Tuesday was my first day of OB clinicals. I got to watch a c-section, so that was pretty cool! That was probably the most exciting moment of the day. The saddest moment was seeing a stillborn baby born after only 20 weeks gestation. I pretty much decided by the end of the day that I would never want to work OB. Here are my reasons:

1. I wouldn't be able to deal with sad situations like stillborns or miscarriages.
2. There are too many dysfunctional family situations in OB. I pictured it as being all happily married moms and dads...but in reality, you see more women who aren't married, women in the middle of divorce, teenagers, and all sorts of other situations. It's just depressing to see babies born into bad situations like that.
3. There are so many ethical issues like abortion, IVF, surrogate mothers, etc. I'd rather just not have to deal with those on a regular basis.

Travis had one test today, and he has a couple of tests next week. I've also got 3 tests coming up before spring break. We'll both be busy bees until then!